A series of weekly posts where I share information about useful (and straightforward) tools and strategies for improving your web presence.

This week I bring you the gold nuggets from a session at the 2012 Emerging Writers’ Festival about Digital Writing (a session where writers talked about how they create and publish in the online space).  

Writing online is exciting

John Weldon says one of his favourite things about writing online is that “In a virtual world, we’re all shape-shifters. We are the author, the character, and the reader.”

It’s a fantastic opportunity to play with these roles, and to meet other people and their ideas. 

You’ll only get out of it what you put in 

“Having an online presence is like having a gym membership. Everyone’s joined up but hardly anyone goes. You have to run that digital treadmill” (John Weldon). It’s not just about writing online, it’s about putting the effort in to let people know that it’s there.

1. Be consistent

• It doesn’t matter if you only publish something once a week, but you must be predictable and reliable about when you publish.

2. Let your personality shine

• Don’t over-edit your work to the point that your voice doesn’t shine through. You shouldn’t be aiming to sound like everyone else.
• But do think about your audience and tailor your tone to suit.  

3. Interact with people

• Take the time to read digital writing by other people, and make the effort to say something encouraging or to share it with other people if you liked it. 
• Meet up with people in real life (IRL) who are in your online community.
• Make friends with web developers and other people with useful skills who might be able to help you.  

Thank you to the Emerging Writers’ Festival for holding this session, and to the panel members for their great tips and discussion: Christy Dena, Andrew Ramadge, Carla Sammut, John Weldon and David Witteveen (the host). 

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If you missed the Emerging Writers’ Festival, don’t despair! They were very innovative and created an entire website for people who couldn’t attend, full of videos of presentations and tips, panels, conversations and exhibitions. You can check it all out, anytime, here: http://ewfdigital.com/

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I wrote this listening to I Am Loveproof: 

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